Griswold manslaughter suspect held on $1M bond

Wednesday

Sep 26, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 26, 2012 at 11:10 AM

Before stabbing his brother in the neck during a heated dispute outside a Jewett City apartment earlier this month, 22-year-old Jeffrey Savoy intervened in an argument between John Coddington and the mother of his children, court records show.

Adam Benson

Before stabbing his brother in the neck during a heated dispute outside a Jewett City apartment earlier this month, 22-year-old Jeffrey Savoy intervened in an argument between John Coddington and the mother of his children, court records show.

Savoy appeared in New London Superior Court Wednesday, where he was arraigned on charges of first-degree manslaughter, assault on a police officer and interfering with an officer from the Sept. 5 incident that left Coddington, 27, dead.

Savoy is being held on $1 million bond with another court appearance slated for Oct. 24.

According to case files, Savoy showed up at Coddington’s 231 N. Main St. apartment to find him fighting with Kimberly Bewlay, the mother of Coddington’s children. Savoy put the children in a vehicle and took them to their grandmother’s house before returning to the residence.
That’s when Coddington began “swearing at him also asking for his children,” court records state.

According to Savoy, Coddington pushed him down a flight of stairs and out a back door, when the men began fighting. During the confrontation, Savoy reportedly swung a knife at Coddington and missed.

“Don’t pull a knife on me. If you wanna fight use your hands. I’m your brother,” Coddington reportedly told Savoy before he was stabbed in the throat and walked to the nearby Best Way Food Store for help.

Meanwhile, police say Savoy tried to barricade himself in the basement of the apartment complex, and was discovered “behind the duct work above the furnace wedged in between the duct work, the foundation and the ceiling.”

He was taken into custody after jumping over an oil tank that brought electrical wiring from the ceiling to the ground.

During an interview with police, Savoy said he and his brother had a history of fighting, but that he wasn’t trying to hurt him, and drove to the gas station because he wanted to drive Coddington to the hospital.